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AtariAge welcomes Philip Price, creator/coder of 'Alternate reality'


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$A12,030,081 As I recall, something like that in the hex editor represented playing G above middle C for 1/2 a second. So you have this stuff running for the 4 voices and then you would compile it... Listen and know where you screwed up haha.

 

Here's some links to versions of a few of songs from the 97 era.

Edited by ARO2
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$A12,030,081 As I recall, something like that in the hex editor represented playing G above middle C for 1/2 a second. So you have this stuff running for the 4 voices and then you would compile it... Listen and know where you screwed up haha.

 

Here's some links to versions of a few of songs from the 97 era.

 

 

Your music has been living in my head since 1987! I still hum the opening theme to this day, lol!

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Just found this thread today.. Thanks Gary for finding it and bumping it up.

 

WOW.. I read all through it, and I don't think there was an answer on the Special edition of AR for $100 or about getting more AR crowd funded.

 

I MUST beleive that this could be crowd funded.

 

I am an RPG (pen and Paper) fan .. and RUNEQUEST which did not have the popularity of D&D was just redone.. and it was just reprinting and corrections and they funded it more than 10x over.

 

Battletech .. which I really enjoyed all the earlier games is coming out with a new tactical simulation and it has also exceeded funding 10x if not more.

 

Crowd funding through forum notifications will reach world wide - there are enough A8 people that are now middle aged adults that would not bat an eye at $50 for a re-relase with manuals and expanded editions (digital?) and "patches"

 

I see Phil has not signed on since Feb this year. I wonder if he has moved on to some other things.

 

Gary - if you and Phil own it.. was allowing the community to fund expansion of the game ever considered? what is there to loose to try? Maybe looking at getting some of the good A8 game programmers out there and Phil just head the project and not code as his "real" job takes up too much time.

 

I so wish I never got rid of AR and OM Universe.. both of those needed the original materials. I would love to see a return of AR.

 

James

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Regarding a return of AR...

Aside from the 97 foray there was also a brief but exciting attempt to restart AR online in late 2007 and early 2008. To make a long story short it went away when Activision and Blizzard merged.

As to another go at it... That's gonna be something Philip will have to initiate.

AR is really his baby. While we lived, ate and slept little else in late 83 early 84... Phil's the guy who designed and made it happen.

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Just here to say thanks Philip and Gary for the awesome Alternate Reality back in the day! I will say a buddy of mine works at the same company Philip does or used to, and we both thought about emailing something random about Alternate Reality but never did get that email out :)... We weren't 100% sure it was THE PP..

 

Anyway, I still remember a good friend of mine spending the whole night over playing Alternate Reality The City one time - we had two Atari's setup.. would level strength a bit by going out at night time and parrying against trolls or something like that (a regenerating creature) ... Unfortunately I lost my friend a few years later under tragic circumstances (still quite young) but that night playing AR was one of the best / most fun memories we had together. (He did later write some programs in assembler on the 8bit then PC, and AR served some form of inspiration for that too i believe).

 

Thanks Philip and Gary!

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I've sat here for an entire evening reading and watching everything posted in this tread. What a truly remarkable story. I

Can't begin to remember how many nights my wife and I would put the kids to bed and load AR. We would take turns (one

would walk around and the other would map). We took four pieces of graph paper and taped them together in a large square

to plot the city. Thank you sir for this wonderful gift you have left us. And yes, I would be willing to buy a new release of the

old game too (even if the autograph was extra)! The paper, the notes, and packaging are long gone. But I still have these:

 

Thanks again,

David Milsop

Kingwood, Texas

post-47264-0-00980500-1483081067_thumb.jpg

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Thank you Phillip and Gary. I love this game so much I even reviewed it. Put me in line for a remake or collectors addition. I'm waiting to play it again soon..

 

Check out my review: http://ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=248

I read your review and you also mentioned Ultima. But you did forget to mention another RPG for the Atari. Phantasy I and II. Anyhow, you wrote a very good review of this superb game. Thanks.

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  • 1 month later...

5. No job is perfect, there are many good things and bad things as with all work. My ideal work? Having a nice home in the city my fiancée likes here in Florida fully paid, have the resources to work fulltime on a game for a few years, but with a small team with a low burn rate and the right resources to write some mind blowing games. Not have to worry while doing it about putting food on the table or affording simple pleasures. I would love doing things that bring a lot of happiness and thought into people's lives. But that is not life at this time.

 

Just recently discovered this forum and thread I'd like to say I heartily concur - ha, we have the same long-term plan. I left the games industry after 20 years for a "normal" software engineering gig; personally but I'd leap at the opportunity to work on a new AR game if you ever decide to go for it (hint hint). Creating something at your own pace without the pressure to make a living from it, a true labor of love.. that's the holy grail as far as I'm concerned.

 

Phillip and Gary, thanks for your epic contributions to the RPG genre; I think the best gaming memories of my life came from playing AR "The City" on an 800XL as a teenager. The amazing atmosphere (e.g. wind, rain, lighting, thunder, the sound of the blacksmith's hammer on his anvil), the "hardcore" gameplay (when you're dead - you're dead, so choose wisely), the detailed 128 color graphics, the music, the overarching story-line, everything. It was my kind of game and I don't think there has ever been anything else that quite compares. I really hope you get a new AR project up and running someday and maybe the entire tale can be told from start to finish as you intended it to be.

Edited by ClawsAndPaws
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  • 11 months later...

AR was, is and always will be my favorite game of all time. It is THE reason I ever upgraded memory and eventually 4 floppy drives. I have characters still from 1986, on original floppy disk, saved as both city and dungeon characters. I still play new and old characters today. I have character on disk that college buddies created back in the early 90's.

 

I still dream of seeing the original Atari 800 version comleted with the other areas, Palace, Arena, Wilderness, Destiny.

Edited by Gunstar
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I can verify (anything that is correct) if that is what people need. But if I edit the page that itself may make them think the page on me, ar, tail of beta lyrae are pages of only self interest.

 

I think people will have to chime in at wikipedia comment site on whether philip price the programmer should be deleted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Philip_Price_(programmer)

 

I do think that the people of the later gaming areas as others said here are ignorant of much that happened early on.

 

One person comment at the delete yay or nay site said I was just a programmer working on a game that might be notable. I think they may think it was like many games later with big budgets. They may not realize I was the game designer and not just one programmer who worked on a mega million game budget game like they are today. Hey at one point I was living in a shack.lol. The industry was nascent and very different back then. They may just be ignorant. But deletion of the page just causes loss of history.

 

Another said "Let's let the secondary sources decide how independently notable Price is from the game itself. ". The fallacy in that logic is like saying lets take what the person is notable for and see how independently notable they are without it. That would of course eliminate everyone that is notable.

 

But the game design, the crypto, the anti tamper techniques, the novel musical language allowing composer to define probable musical paths, the 3d texture mapping techniques, moral choice and non-forced story was all me. Divorcing AR (Especially the City) from me destroy the human history of the innovations. Pointing any link to me to just the page on ar the city does not let people know the works related to the one game designer, nor the human element involved. Beta Lyrae had a game whose game elements changed after you owned and played it for a while, something back then was a first in a game too. I think that diminishes Wikipedia. It definitely would diminish the history of gaming, and particularly the Atari 8 bit history.But that is my own biased opinion.

 

 

The remark one person mentioned a link to what sources are acceptable as a source of information, "credible video game sources", that listhas very few pre-1985 'credible' sources. No antic or A.N.A.L.O.G., nothing atari related, guess it doesn't exist, but they do have a sinclar magazine. But as the earlier part of the page it says that common sense should be used. There have been a few interviews of me. Haug's book on the interview of 30 programmers who helped start the video industry with a forward by John Romaro is one of them. I think every one of those thirty should at least have a wiki page about them so that video game history (History is both the games and the principal people behind them) does not disappear.

 

Magazine sources can also be wrong, There was an article in one magazine where they described that I learned programming while at sea in the navy. The journalist who interviewed me had it wrong, the navy kept me away from the sea, and had said they would never let me work on computers, that is why I became a nuclear reactor operator. I had told the journalist when he interviewed me back then, after the article came out, I called him up thinking he made an unintentional mistake,. But his reply was,"But doesn't it sound good that way?". I then realized that what you read about people in a magazine is not always true.

 

But Wikipedia is whatever the people who decide to take time to delete or protect make of it. No matter what changes there, really the greatest value thing would not be impacted by whether that page is there or deleted. The greatest value thing, as I have said before, of the work I did back at the beginning of the gaming industry is the joy it had brought to the people who experienced it [especially back then].

 

Phil

 

The deletion of your Wiki page is terrible! I wish I had been aware of this when it was going on as I've fought the Wikipedia 'gatekeepers' on numerous pages from issues with Barack Obama's birth certificate and the natural born citizen clause of the US Constitution to Holocaust propaganda and WW2. I'm surprised there is a group of them putting up a fuss about game developers though, that is somewhat odd. The general problem with Wikipedia is that there are biased armies of editors camping out at Wikipedia defending their desired version of every controversial topic of interest, and some of them are politically and financially motivated, as I proved with Obama related pages by looking up the political contributions of the editors censoring his pages. When anyone stumbles upon anything misleading or any omission in Wikipedia and tries to correct it they will often immediately be swarmed by an army of editors that disagree with making the needed additions or corrections. You cannot trust information in Wikipedia anymore, because it's often slanted now.

 

I think the key argument that should have been, and still should be made in your case is that you were a pioneer in new game technologies and designs. As you pointed out earlier, an invention is nothing without the inventor. Many people are recognized in Wikipedia for being the first person to accomplish or develop something, and in your case it should be no different. They truly are treating you like just another programer rather than an innovator, and it's surely due to ignorance or some other motive. Can you confirm in detail all the key technologies or game designs that were firsts in Alternate Reality?

Edited by Xebec's Demise
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You can send a complaint to Apple.

 

Allan

I don't work on the production side, I'm in R&D, but I've been here for a while now and I know a few peeps. I'll see how many trees I can shake, and maybe we can get something to happen.

 

Alternate Reality, together with Elite on the BBC, were *the* most spectalur games of the era. Well done, sir.

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In regard the Sam Esmail series "Mr. Robot", I see the use of the name "Phillip Price" as perhaps a big nod to AR game creator?
Having done some searches I find it odd there aren't more "associations".
I found this however they'd missed it being Philip Price's Advanced Music Processor that was used in the game "Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory".

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That would make a really good RastaConverta pic.

A better picture is needed That thumbnail is only 200x150 and would look terrible. I can't even really see it to tell if I thought it would be a good image.

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I still dream of seeing the original Atari 800 version comleted with the other areas, Palace, Arena, Wilderness, Destiny.

This would be beyond fantastic.

 

As an aside, I think the entire Alternate Reality story (as it was intended it to play out) would make the basis for a very compelling TV or movie series if done well - i.e. written, produced and directed by people who actually know and love the game. Phillip and Gary are you reading this? :) Ok I'm sure other people have thought the same thing. But damn, it would be sweet!

Edited by ClawsAndPaws
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  • 7 months later...

 

Parties appear to go on for years in the Internet age, so no problem!

 

What is your avatar image? ARO concept?

 

photo-7625.jpg

10 or so years after Alternate Reality - The City, there was an attempt to visit it once again. That attempt failed. 10 years after that (2006-7), yet another attempt was made to allow people on earth to see and join the current happenings in that world. This attempt also failed. The picture was taken during that second attempt.

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  • 1 month later...

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